MOTHERS who say they endured appalling treatment at a hospital mired in scandal have spoken out about what happened on its deadly maternity ward.

Melbourne’s Bacchus Marsh Hospital became notorious last year, after it was revealed 11 newborn babies had died in two years. Last night’s 7.30 revealed the number of deaths is in fact 18, uncovering a pattern of shocking allegations from patients, with one obstetrician sued at least a dozen times.

One mother claimed she was sent home with aggressive infections that had left her unable to even hold her child. She still has a hole in her stomach after major corrective surgery 18 months later.

Another said the hospital failed to detect a condition that stopped her uterus from growing, despite her repeated insistence that something was wrong, and the baby wasn’t moving.

Two days after her last 10-minute CTG scan, Jacinta was told her baby Ruby was dead, and she would have to drive 56km to deliver the child.

“I screamed and I wanted just to not feel a thing,” she told the ABC program. “I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t want to be there cause I knew what was coming. And I knew that it was all going to be real at the end of it, that my baby was not going to cry and that she was not going to look at me and that I would have to hand her to someone else and not take her home.

Caress Spiteri is suing Bacchus Marsh after the hospital sent her home with two aggressive infections and she had to have major corrective surgery.

Eighteen babies have died at the Melbourne hospital in two years.Source:News Corp Australia

“It was one of the most painful, gut-wrenching things I’ve ever, ever been through in my life.”

The foetal heart monitoring equipment used on Jacinta was one of the key concerns in an independent review ordered by the Victorian Health Department. The monitor was 25 years old.

The review was instigated after officials found that a cluster of five babies were stillborn at the hospital in 2013-14 at full term, very rare in obstetrics.

Caress Spiteri was discharged three days after an emergency caesarean section, despite being in excruciating pain from two infections. When a Bacchus Marsh nurse visited two days later, she told the new mum she was fine.

“Two days after that I had the child maternal nurse come home for our first visit,” Ms Caress said. “When she pushed my stomach up to see my wound, it actually exploded and all the pus shot out to the side of my stomach. She then told me to pack my son’s bags and get myself immediately to the hospital.”

Ms Caress finally saw a senior doctor at Bacchus Marsh at her two-week check-up. “He just grabbed my stomach like that and lifted it up,” she told 7.30. “His thumb was actually in the wound and he told me that I got the infection because I was fat.”

The doctor has denied saying this in legal correspondence but noted that obesity is a risk factor for infection. A week later, Ms Caress had surgery at the Royal Women’s Hospital and she is now suing Bacchus Marsh.

Mother opens up on harrowing experiencing of losing her baby at Bacchus Marsh Hospital0:33

Young mother 'Jacinta' opens up on her harrowing experience of losing a baby at Bacchus Marsh hospital on the 730 Report. Courtesy: 730 Report/ABC

The same doctor was also allegedly responsible for the care of a woman whose baby was stillborn. She haemorrhaged badly during labour and was sent home with a life-threatening blood illness that wasn’t picked up. A few days later she was rushed to another hospital, where her condition became so serious she almost died.

Western Health’s head of obstetrics, Professor Glyn Teale, reported the doctor to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), but the regulator failed to act for two years.

“Our client is devastated about the time that it took AHPRA to make its finding because she questions and thinks about what could have been,” said her lawyer Dimitra Dubrow. “All those other babies, all those other lives that could’ve been saved if the hospital had acted sooner or AHPRA had made its finding sooner.”

In October last year, Health Minister Jill Hennessy revealed that seven of the 11 baby deaths could have been prevented.

The senior doctor resigned in late 2015 and Ms Hennessy sacked the board and management of Bacchus Marsh. The doctor told 7.30 he couldn’t remember whether he was involved in any of the cluster of stillborn deliveries.

But he isn’t the only medic caught up in the scandal. Several doctors at Bacchus Marsh were involved in avoidable stillbirths, at least three have been subject to notifications to AHPRA and two have had restrictions placed upon their practice.

Tracy lost her daughter Tommi after she was delivered naturally by Dr Calandra.

Candice Weir brought a case against Dr Calandra after a five-day labour. Her son Luca has displayed evidence of developmental delays.Source:News Limited

One doctor, who is not linked to the recent cluster of stillborn babies, but has been sued 13 times for alleged medical negligence in Melbourne’s west over 14 years. All cases were settled.

The doctor delivered Tracy Danskin-Anthony’s baby daughter Tommi at Werribee Mercy Hospital in 2001. Tracy says she heard the nurses saying the baby was in distress, but the doctor delivered her naturally.

She came out purple, not crying or moving, and was put on life support. “I remember just thinking, ‘just breathe, just breathe’,” said Tracy. Tommi died a few days later.

Candice Weir brought a case against the doctor after a five-day labour, in which her son Luca’s heartbeat kept speeding up and slowing down. The doctor told her the child was grabbing his cord and making himself pass out.

He was born with sepsis (blood poisoning) and, at five, is showing signs of autism or ADHD. Candice has been advised by a lawyer to have his brain scanned when he is 10 to see if his behavioural and speech delays were caused at birth. “I get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking about that and what happened there,” she told 7.30. “It does, it brings up a sick feeling in my stomach.”

The doctor declined to speak to the program.

Patient complaints about the doctor prompted the medical regulator to place restrictions on his registration for six months in 2012. He continued to practise at both Werribee Mercy and Bacchus Marsh.

Bacchus Marsh wouldn’t tell 7.30 what it knew about the restrictions or the writs, but the hospital’s former chairman says he has no idea about them.

At least three doctors who were involved in some of the avoidable baby deaths are still practising at Bacchus Marsh and AHPRA is now doing a wider investigation into this area’s only maternity hospital — a terrifying thought.